Last weekend we hosted a trial on behalf of the Cornwall Sheepdog Society.

Bill (pictured) – who has been running the sheepdog training courses on the farm over the winter – came the day before and set up a deceptively simple looking course while I fetched 140 odd hoggs (young ewes) to be left in the field overnight to acclimatise themselves to the gates and hurdles.

“We’d better test the course” said Bill once we had set up, and promptly let his dog Splatt loose on a half dozen sheep who proceeded to guided them expertly up the field and neatly through one of the ‘gates’.

“D’yer wanna hav’ a go?” he innocently asked.

Why not, I thought. There’s nobody about and I was sure I could detect a certain smugness in Bill’s amiable challenge. We let another 6 sheep out of the pen and I fetched Morag from the truck.

The gates for sheep dog trails consist of two hurdles with a 7 yard gap between. Now this might sound easy but the nearest gate was at least 200 yards from me and (without my glasses) seemed just a blur in the distance. I let Morag of the chain and she chased the startled sheep up the field at her customary 168 mph, while I hollered at the top of my voice in a vain attempt to direct her left and right.

Call it a fluke, call it luck or call it divine intervention but the sheep galloped up the hill in tight bunch and straight through the gate.

While Bill picked his jaw back up off of the grass, I nonchalantly called Morag back and tied her up in the back of the truck saying, “You know, I might well give it a go tomorrow.”

By 9am the next morning, 40 local dogs were all lined up ready for the off. The running order had the most inexperienced dogs first and Bill took the first spot with a very young dog that , like Morag, had never competed before.

For the trial, we stood at the top of the field, while the sheep were let out 5 at a time from a pen at the bottom - some 300 yards away. Poor Bill couldn’t even get his youngster to find the sheep, let alone drive them and after 5 mins of cussing and shouting had to withdraw defeated. Well if Bill didn’t mind looking the ass then nor did I and I entered Morag’s name at the end of the novices.

I was confidant that she would be able to collect the distant ewes and bring them to me and this she easily managed, only missing the first gate by a dozen yards. Having now run over ¼ mile, she had slowed her down sufficiently to be able to control her enough to get the sheep away from me down to the second gate on the far right of the field.

Here it all went wrong. One ewe strayed from the pack and Morag pounced, giving her a healthy nip on the hind quarters and sending off to the far corner of the field.

While I was shouting at her at the top of my voice, I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder. It was the judge asking me politely to withdraw. Apparently, this sort of rough behaviour is strictly against the rules and no amount of pleading that they were my sheep anyway was going to make any difference!